by I. T. Lucas
For some reason, Ella had trouble using the term dominance. Maybe because it suggested things that were further up the spectrum from what she craved. All she wanted was an alpha type male who was sexually assertive but not a caveman, and she was definitely not interested in the sort of games she’d read about in the Fifty Shades book.
It was so damn confusing. Was it like this for everyone?
She doubted it. Otherwise most would have not found compatible partners. In her case, it was like only one very particular shade could unlock her desires, and all the rest were ineffective.
In short, it was a recipe for disappointment.
He chuckled sadly. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’ve been suppressing my caveman urges because I believed they would scare you. But now that we’ve figured it out, it should no longer be a problem.”
If only the solution could be so simple. But nothing in Ella’s life was.
“The thing is, you weren’t wrong. Not entirely.”
Shaking his head, Julian let go of her hand. “Now you’ve got me completely confused. One moment you say that you crave my inner caveman, and then you admit that he scares you. What am I supposed to do?”
Did he think that he was the only one who was frustrated by this?
“I can’t help it, Julian. I crave something that scares the hell out of me, and I’m in a Catch 22 situation. For reasons I can’t understand, I need to yield control to get aroused, but I’m terrified of letting anyone have that much power over me. It’s not that I don’t trust you, or that I’m afraid of you, but I just can’t let go. I have to stay in control.”
Hooking a finger under her chin, he lifted her head so she would look into his eyes. “Why do you need to stay in control? You are safe with me, and you are safe here in the village. I’m sure you realize it.”
“I do. That's not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
God, he was killing her. Forcing her to dig deep into what made her tick and look at what she didn’t want to see.
“If I let go, I’ll fall apart. The only thing holding me together is my control over what I allow myself to feel and what I don’t. Numbness is my friend. Can you understand that?”
She was being unfair to him. Julian couldn’t possibly know how it felt to be her. He’d never been humiliated, sold like a piece of property, and used. He hadn’t felt helpless and hopeless, and he hadn’t been touched by evil.
“I think I do.” He scratched his short beard. “You keep everything bottled up inside and plow through by the sheer force of your will. That’s your survival mechanism. But you are tired of pretending and of carrying this burden alone. It’s like holding up a ton of bricks. They are too heavy for your arms, and you wish there was a way for you to put them down, but you can’t stoop without breaking your back, and you are forced to keep trudging onward.”
That was such an insightful analogy that she could actually visualize herself walking with a huge pile of bricks, not in her arms but tied to her back. If she crouched, her knees were going to buckle, and if she bent forward, the bricks were going to crash into her head and smash it.
There was no way out from under them.
Not now, and not ever. She was stuck with that impossibly heavy cargo weighing her down.
Unbidden, tears started pooling in the corners of her eyes, and a moment later they were streaming down her cheeks in twin salty rivulets.
“I can’t see a way out, Julian. I’m stuck.”
“Blast them, one at a time.” He made a finger gun and aimed it at her invisible cargo.
Julian was trying to cheer her up, but once the dam had burst, there was no stopping the flood. The tears just kept coming.
Besides, she couldn’t visualize his suggestion.
“How can I blast them when they are on my back? I can’t aim.” The words came out in a sob.
“What I mean by blasting is talking to me about them. As long as you keep them inside, they feed on you and gain substance. But putting them out there, not all at once, but one at a time, will suck that substance out of them and they will dissipate into thin air. Eventually, as the load gets lighter, you’ll be able to stand up tall and shake the rest off.”
Again, she could visualize that happening, but instead of the bricks falling off, they would just transfer onto Julian’s back. His empathetic nature made working in a human hospital impossible because he couldn’t take the suffering of strangers. Her suffering would be so much worse for him the carry.
“I wish I could. But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because those bricks are not going to dissipate. They are going to land on your back. I don’t want to do it to you.”
Leaning, he kissed her tear-stained cheek. “My back is pretty sturdy, and my thigh muscles are strong. Once you transfer your bricks to me, I’ll just crouch down and put them on the ground. Then we will take a big sledge-hammer and blast them all the way to hell where they belong.”
55
Julian
Ella had reached a breaking point. Or perhaps it was a breakthrough?
Trying to comfort her and stop the crying, Julian had been pulling nonsense out of his ass.
He’d never had to deal with an emotional meltdown before. His mother was a pillar of strength who he hadn’t seen shed a single tear, and in the hospital, it hadn’t been his job to provide comfort or counsel.
It was his fault.
If he hadn’t pushed and probed, she wouldn’t be sobbing right now like her world was ending.
Except, maybe it was good for her to let it all out, cathartic?
He just wished Ella would talk to him instead of sobbing. She’d been suppressing her feelings so well, probably from herself as well, because he hadn’t sensed the turmoil in her.
Tears alone weren't going to purge the load she was carrying, and once the crying stopped, she would go back to showing strength she apparently didn’t possess.
“I lost my virginity to a guy old enough to be my grandfather, and he wasn’t an immortal with a perfect body. But that wasn’t the worst of it.” As another sob rocked her, Ella waved a hand and then bolted up.
Thinking she was running away from him, he reached for her hand.
“I need a tissue.” She yanked her hand away and dashed to the powder room.
He was such an idiot. The girl was crying her eyes out, and it hadn’t crossed his mind that she needed something to blow her nose into?
Idiot, he murmured under his breath.
The thing was, all he could offer her was a roll of toilet paper because he didn’t have a box of tissues. But he could at least offer her water, or wine, or both.
In the kitchen, he suddenly remembered the stash of Godiva chocolates Ella had given him for safekeeping. If anything could lift her spirits, it was that.
Armed with his secret weapon, a bottle of wine, two bottles of water, and two glasses, Julian returned to the couch and organized everything on the coffee table.
As he waited for the nose blowing and sniffles to stop, he fought the urge to barge into the bathroom and take Ella into his arms.
Obviously, she was trying to get over her crying alone in there, and once she succeeded, she would come out and pretend like everything was alright.
It would be the end of their talk, and the weight of nasty she was carrying around would keep festering inside her.
Perhaps he should knock on the door and ask if she was okay?
Right. Talk about stupid.
She obviously was not.
When Ella finally opened the door, she was much more composed. Her eyes and nose were red, but she wasn’t crying anymore.
“Sorry about that.” She sat next to him on the couch. “I didn’t mean to have a meltdown like that.”
Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, Julian pulled Ella closer. “No apologies, remember? And besides, I want you to let it all out. No more keeping things from me and feeling guilty about i
t.”
He leaned, opened the box of chocolates, and brought one to her mouth. “I can promise you this. No matter what you tell me, or how bad you think it is, nothing will make me walk away from you.”
Chewing on the chocolate, she arched a brow. “What if I told you I had dream sex with Mr. D?”
His gut clenched with fury, but it wasn’t directed at Ella. He was just going to kill Lokan. “Dream sex doesn’t count. But I will have to kill him.”
She chuckled. “Please don’t. At least not until Turner and Kian finish interrogating him. And no, I didn’t have dream sex with him. I would never go that far.”
“How far did you go? I’m just asking, so this issue no longer creates a divide between us. I don’t want you to carry guilt on top of that ton of bricks.”
Reaching for another chocolate, she motioned at the wine. “Can you pour me a glass?”
“With pleasure.”
Taking the wineglass, she sniffed it. “The Russian got me into wine drinking. I thought I wouldn’t want to touch it because of the memories it brought, but I still like it.” She chuckled. “I’m just glad he didn’t feed me Godiva chocolates. If that put me off them, it would’ve been a disaster of epic proportions.”
Ella was reverting to her old self, joking and making sarcastic comments, and Julian wondered whether she was doing it to change the subject and end confession time.
But she continued, “I let him kiss me, that was all. But it wasn’t like with the Russian. With him, I was just enduring it.”
She took another sip. “I feel so shallow and dirty, but I can’t stay indifferent to the Doomer. Maybe it’s because he’s so handsome, and it’s only physical. And maybe it’s because he is intelligent in a cunning and evil way, and that makes him intriguing.”
Looking into his wine glass, Julian’s entire focus was on keeping his fangs from elongating, his eyes from glowing, and his throat from growling. He’d promised Ella he would keep his cool, and it was crucial that he didn’t break that promise even in the slightest.
She was opening up to him, telling him things she’d feared were going to upset him, and he wanted her to keep talking.
Ella took another sip of wine, reached for another chocolate, but didn’t pop it into her mouth. “I could’ve lived with that. None of it was too horrible for a human girl who didn’t buy into the whole true-love mates thing immortals believe in.” She took a little bite off the chocolate and chewed, probably buying herself some time to think.
Emptying the wine down his throat, Julian poured himself another glass.
This talk was illuminating on more than one level.
Apparently, the guilt she was feeling was his fault. After all, he’d been the one who’d pressed the issue of her being his true-love mate. No wonder she’d resisted accepting it.
When she finished chewing, Ella took another sip of wine and then continued in a near whisper. “What bothers me is that I might be attracted to his darkness because there is so much of it in me. I’m tainted, and so is he. Even when I was still terrified of him, I felt the pull. It felt to me as though like was recognizing like.”
She chuckled without mirth. “I even called him Darth Sidious, and joked about him tempting me over to the dark side.”
Julian’s initial response was an intense need to get his hands on Lokan and tear his throat out. Luckily, not all of his brain had been taken over by the caveman, and some of the logic synapses were still operational.
“The pull you initially felt toward him had to be affinity. Amanda speculates that Dormants and immortals feel a special connection, and that is another indicator for identifying Dormants. That feeling of like recognizing like is exactly how she describes it. But because you didn’t know what it was, you interpreted it as sexual attraction. And since the Doomer is, unfortunately, very good-looking, you had no reason to question that interpretation.”
56
Ella
Hmm, could he be right?
It would be so nice if it were true.
Perhaps it was?
Amanda was a scientist, a neuroscience professor who was researching Dormants and ways to identify them. She must know what she was talking about.
Except, affinity had several meanings, and Amanda might have been referring to the sexual one.
“Affinity, eh? If I remember the definition correctly, it can also mean attraction.”
“That’s true, but what Amanda is referring to is the feeling of belonging to a group—the mutual origins that Dormants and immortals share. Most Dormants report a lifetime of feeling different than other humans, like they don’t belong. But with immortals they experience that sensation you get when meeting someone for the first time and hitting it off right away. It’s the like recognizing like you’ve talked about. That’s what got me thinking about Amanda’s affinity theory.”
Feeling as if the boulder sitting inside her stomach had shrunk a little, Ella took in her first deep breath since this conversation had started.
“So, I’m off the hook? You’re no longer jealous?”
“I didn’t say that. Of course, I’m jealous. But I can live with that.” He winked.
The boulder shrank by several more inches.
“You have no idea what a relief this is. You’ve just blasted half of those damn bricks, and I feel so much lighter. I was so sure something was really wrong with me. How could I feel a pull toward a despicable guy?”
She threw her hands in the air. “Even before I knew he was a Doomer, I knew that he was a warlord and that he was buying weapons from the Russian. He didn’t even try to make himself look nice, admitting to being as bad as they come. Good looks shouldn’t have been enough to blindside me, and neither should his smarts or his dubious charm. I saw through all of that down to the rotten core of him and still couldn’t stop the bloody attraction.”
“You know what your biggest problem is?” Julian refilled her empty wine glass.
The boulder started expanding again.
She should’ve known that Julian couldn’t be as accepting as he’d seemed. After hearing her confession, any normal guy would’ve been foaming at the mouth or walking away, and as understanding and compassionate as Julian was, he wasn’t a saint. Now he was going to tell her what he really thought.
Pretending nonchalance, she shrugged and lifted her feet onto the couch, tucking them under her long skirt. “There are so many of them that I wouldn't know which one you’re referring to.”
“You are stubborn.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected.
Ella lifted a brow. “How so?”
“If you’d talked to Vanessa when you’d just gotten here and told her what you’ve told me, she would have figured out immediately that what you felt for Lokan was affinity and would have explained it to you. You could’ve saved yourself weeks of needless fear and self-doubt.”
That was a relief. She could live with Julian thinking that she was stubborn. It was much better than the other personality flaws he could have accused her of.
Grimacing, Ella took a long sip of wine. “I hate shrinks.”
The box of chocolates was still mostly full, and she was tempted to reach for another. It had such a calming effect on her, but her stomach wouldn’t appreciate it.
“You didn’t give her a chance.”
Ella waved a dismissive hand. “I knew she was going to suck the moment she tried to convince me that I was raped.”
He arched a brow. “You weren’t?”
“No. I was coerced. There is a big difference. I wasn’t attacked, and I wasn’t beaten up. I cooperated. I had no choice, but it was my decision to agree.”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t see the difference. What if you were at a club and someone slipped you a roofie or a similar date-rape drug? You wouldn’t have resisted then either, but I’m sure that as soon as the drugging effect was over, you would’ve marched into the nearest police station to report it as rape.”
“
That’s different.’”
“How so?”
“Because if I were drugged, I wouldn’t have been able to make a conscious decision to cooperate.”
“So, what you are saying is that your decision-making ability would have been taken away from you?”
In a shrink-like manner, he’d restated what she’d said in the form of a question, and that was no doubt leading somewhere.
Ella put her wine glass down and crossed her arms over her chest. “It would have been impaired by the drug.”
“An impaired ability to make a choice.”
He was starting to annoy her. “Where are you going with this, Julian? I hate the shrink-ish roundabout talk. Just say what you mean.”
Raking his fingers through his hair, he sighed. “I was trying to lead you to the conclusion without having to say it myself, but you are more stubborn than a clan of badgers. So here it goes.” He took a deep breath and pinned her with a hard look. “When your only choice is to cooperate, then it is like not having a choice at all. It is rape.”
“I could have said no. I could’ve fought.”
“Could you have really?”
Crap.
He was right.
She couldn't.
Not without risking her family, and not without sustaining significant injuries. And since it would have been utterly stupid to resist, the choice hadn’t been really a choice.
It had been an illusion.
She’d been raped.
As the tears started falling anew, Julian wrapped his arms around her and lifted her onto his lap.
“I’m so sorry, love. I know it hurts, but I believe that the only way to put it behind you is to let it out.”
She slapped his chest. “What would you know about it? Have you ever been humiliated? Violated? Treated like an object for sale? You know nothing, Julian.”
